My Heart's in the Highlands

 This week we read Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf (same author of The Story of Ferdinand), so we visited Scotland. It's the story of a boy who is torn between living with his father's family in the Highlands where they stalk stags and living with his mother's family in the Lowlands where they herd cows.
There was so much I wanted to do with this that I keep thinking of more and more ideas without time to fit it all in. The kids loved the book right away and the ink illustrations are especially good.
We found the Highlands and Lowlands on a map and Hannah wrote a few words from another book about Scotland we read. I explained we have many ancestors from Scotland. I have a long list on Ancestry.com we'll show them when they're a little older. Also, a lady from our church grew up in Scotland. At some point I'd love for the kids to get to talk to her at length about that. Meanwhile, I have 3 kids and she has 4 so that opportunity passed us by this week!

 We made tally marks for how much each region was mentioned in the book as well as a Venn diagram of their similarities and differences. We discussed how we might make the same diagram comparing apples and oranges. I was impressed they came up with more ideas than I did. Finally they made one for themselves- and drew little portraits : ) They enjoyed using a compass for the first time to draw circles.

There were some unexpected connections made this week, which was pretty fun. One morning we had oatmeal for breakfast- a pretty rare occurrence, and then realized Wee Gillis had been eating the same thing. It turns out it's the so-called national breakfast food of Scotland. Soon after we read about the Loch Ness monster (of course!) and found a great fiction book about a girl visiting her grandmother in Scotland. She disliked the oatmeal and threw it out the window on the ship ride over- and who followed her and ate it all? A little worm, and you can guess what he became.

 In the meantime, here are a couple of things I found on Pinterest to keep Colin busy. It's a painter's tape parking lot. They all had fun with this. It was also great for sorting colors and types of cars.

 This one is for younger kids but it still kept him occupied for a little bit.

Back to Scotland, we listened to Prince Charles read Robert Burns' My Heart's in the Highlands. They loved that and wanted it repeated several times. I could tell they learned something new every time and they discussed what the Highlands must look like according to the poem.

 We pulled out a small portion of our plaid clothes after looking at some kilts. We have way more than this- not sure what to think about that! We examined the patterns and each kid designed their own plaid pattern on paper. They chose 3 colors and measured widths and spacing as best they could. 

Then we used a pattern from online to paper towel paint and cut out Nessie. Once they were glued, I surprised them by telling them their plaid patterns were going to give the monster a scarf and hat. We had a lot of fun with this project and they all turned pretty cute.

For music, we listened to a few pieces from a Celtic concert I played a couple of years ago. Hannah fell in love with the 1st movement from Malcolm Arnold's Four Scottish Dances. We listened to it at least 9 times in a row on the way to co-op on Thursday, until Colin requested escape.
That day Hannah participated in the presentations for co-op and played her piano recital piece. It's always good to get another performance in after working so hard!

 On Friday we watched a few bagpipers on You Tube and studied the different parts.

Wee Gillis ends up choosing to be a bagpiper as he has developed his lungs so well from calling cows and holding his breath to keep quiet while stalking stags. I didn't explain too much about stags, but low and behold we began reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and one showed up. They were excited they recognized the animal. Anyway, we decided to explore homemade instruments. They had a friend over on Friday and we tried the classic hitting wine glasses with different amounts of water. Can you tell Chloe was nervous about them breaking? I broke a kitchen glass a looooong time ago, but in her mind it happened yesterday.

 We experimented with rubber bands stretched across various objects and materials to see which resonated the best. Then we made mouth organs with straws- that was the big hit.

 We're taking the week off for Christmas and returning with another classic- Owl Moon, one I didn't love as a kid, but it offers a great array of school lessons. : )

Merry Christmas!!! Blessed Nativity!!!